Inverted Values in Beit Hanoun

Residents of territory from which Israel is fired upon must know that they have two options: either prevent the firing or leave before their homes are destroyed.

Moshe Feiglin, 15/11/06 23:32

Moshe Feiglin.jpg

Arutz 7

Moshe Feiglin

The writer, former MK and Speaker of the Knesset, is head of the Zehut party, dedicated to providing Israel with authentic Jewish leadership. The party's goals are based on Jewish identity and liberty. It strives to imbue every facet of Israeli life with the meaning of Jewish destiny.

The planned operation was the mistake. And the mistake should have been the planned operation.

Last week's military operation in Beit Hanoun, in which Israel attempted -- as usual -- to find the terror needle in the civilian haystack, was responsible for Israeli casualties, but registered no military achievements.

On the other hand, the mistake -- accidental shelling of a civilian building in Beit Hanoun -- should have been the planned operation in the first place, albeit in a calculated and controlled manner.

Residents of territory from which Israel is fired upon must know that they have two options: either prevent the firing or leave before their homes are destroyed. But this most simple equation, clear to the normative person, is not clear at all to Israel's leaders and army commanders.

The IDF's operation in Beit Hanoun was an exact rerun of all the false concepts that created the failure in last summer's war in Lebanon. It just makes you rub your eyes in amazement. The IDF is great, strong and sophisticated. But on the other hand, it is completely entangled in the values imbroglio of the "enlightened" tyranny.

Israel's defeat in Lebanon created a flurry of studies and research projects -- some more professional than others. The vast majority of these studies dealt with the army's technical functioning. All the generals on the talk shows and all the officers who voiced their opinions focused on the technical. That played perfectly into the hands of the politicians -- both in the political and military leadership. If the problem is technical, it is easy to excuse with technical claims: There will be a commission for this and a commission for that and when we receive the conclusions we will relate to them with gravity. In the meantime we have allocated all the funds and means necessary, etc., etc.

But the defeats that the IDF has suffered time after time are not the direct result of military capability -- which of course must always be upgraded. Instead, the defeats are the result of the inverted values that have overtaken the military establishment.

After two months in a tent in Gush Katif, I was loaded onto a bus and expelled from the region. When I got home, I said to my wife, "That's it. We don't have an army anymore."

"What do you mean?" she said. "Didn't you see how well the army was prepared? The precise logistics? Tens of thousands of soldiers?"

"There is no more army," I said once again. "It buried its soul in the sands of Gush Katif. Now the army is simply a pile of uniforms with nothing inside. The first time it will be up against a real enemy -- and it doesn't matter how small the enemy is -- the army will crumble."

We have to understand. Israel today has no army. The IDF, captive to the ethical codes of former Chief Justice Aharon Barak and leftist army ethicist Asa Kasher, cannot defend us. Not in Beit Hanoun and not in Teheran. For all practical purposes, it no longer exists.

First and foremost, the IDF needs an ethical revolution. The IDF has to become the army of Israel, ready and willing to fight, guided by strictly Jewish values. The justice of its cause must be based on Jewish culture -- not Christian or Muslim. Ultimately, that is the only justice that the other nations will accept, as well.

Jewish morals dictate that "if someone tries to kill you, kill him first." Jewish morals also dictate removing women from the army's combat units. An army guided by Jewish morals will educate its soldiers and provide them with a love of their land and its history, and pride in their Jewish heritage. It will impress them with the importance of liberating and settling all parts of the Land of Israel. It will teach them that triumph equals conquest.

No more burying our heads in the sand, no more illusions of tiring our enemies slowly, no more cowardliness. It means authentic mutual responsibility. It means that if our soldiers are being held captive, nobody in Gaza or Lebanon is going to sleep. They want electricity? Running water? Transportation? Their jailed leaders? The way to get all that is to hand over our soldiers. But before everything else, it means moral purification from the stain of the Disengagement. It means a painful process of dismissal of all the levels of command that were responsible for the crime of expulsion.

The current Israeli ear cannot believe that this proud policy is possible. But in the 1950s, a much weaker Israel with no US support almost went to war against Jordan because terrorists from Jordan murdered Israelis on their way to Eilat. Today, after we have lost our values, our blood has become cheap. This type of proud policy seems imaginary.

In the meantime, the reserve soldiers' protest is waning because it did not address the real issues. The IDF will continue to break its head against the wall, to fail and to force-feed the public with stories of its great success. But in reality, we are all waiting for the next blow, which will likely be more painful and frustrating than ever.

In truth, it is a bit unfair to blame the IDF. Are the army's commanders supposed to determine its moral path? The IDF did not want to draft women to combat units. It was forced to do so by the Supreme Court. Eventually, it became part of the IDF's value system. I don't remember commanders of the past taking pride in the fact that they sacrificed the lives of their soldiers to prevent harm to enemy civilians. Once again, this is an inverted value, forced on the army by the civilian establishment, until it became an integral part of its own value system. How ridiculous is the demand to have the Supreme Court investigate the failures of the Lebanon war? The Supreme Court judges are the unmistakable source of the value inversion that has eliminated the IDF.

In other words, the solution does not begin and end with the army. If Israel wants to continue to exist, it must revolutionize its entire value system. In practical terms, that means electing a new leadership that is appropriate for the job.